Attention guys with Dymag Carbon wheels

Be careful ........This was the result after a drag run..........

yowzers... any word on how that happened? i would assume some type of stress impact?

This is not at all surprising because Dymag uses a magnesium face plate. BBS will not sell their forged magnesium wheels for street use and will only warranty them for a year because of this inherant problem with magnesium wheels. Magnesium racing wheels are thrown away after one season.

 

What blows my mind is that all of these supercar manufacturers like Koenigsegg. Pagani and Callaway are making these wheels an option on their cars.

 

Let the buyer beware...

 

Brad

But....there is a thing that calls my attention on this point. How they join the spokes to the rim ?? Glued ? I can see the rim surface perfectly clean at that points. The wheel was in a Porsche GT3 I guess.

yeah, it seems like all the spoke contact points are just bounded to the outer hub...

Garbage.

Ouch!!

 

I believe Wayne has these on his TT G.

HOLY CRAP!

The yellowing CF would is enough for me to pass on theese wheels. Plus they look like crap. And now this.

 

FAIL.

I would bet that there is more to this story. The center hubs are bolted to the barrels from the inside. Is there any way we can locate the owner of this wheel or car to hear exactly what happened?

Yes, I think so. This is the thread where I found it....

http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic...carbon%20wheels

 

And here is the original source . US Porsche forum...

http://www.6speedonline.com/forums/997-tur...-questions.html

 

 

Cheers,

I warned everyone before............

Yes there is a lot more to the story, like 60 track days on the tire that failed! From the 6speed thread, page 2:

 

I handeled the situation of the broken center for Dymag.
The wheel was broken at a track event in Mexico the customer runs full slicks all the time at the track and  these wheels had about 60 full track days on them unfortunately they were not checked after each event and the spoke developed a hairline crack that started from the engraving on the back of the spoke.  They stamp the back of the spokes with the model number of the mold. The crack propagated causing the spoke to break in half and transfering the weight load the the remaining spoke as he continued to run the wheel then broke as he was in a straight line braking zone at the end of a staright away.
The damage to the car was minimal about $10k and Dymag paid for the damage and the full set of wheels the car was back at the track in 10 days time and the customer was fully reimbursed.
The magnesium center was sent to a testing lab here in the U.S. to make sure that it had all the properties it should have for cast magnesium the test results came back with passing results and upon inspection of the wheel it was determined that fatigue was what caused the failure.

 

I had some issues(leaking) with my Dymags, and the company is replacing my set with the next generation Magnalium centers under warranty at NO CHARGE.

I had some issues(leaking) with my Dymags, and the company is replacing my set with the next generation Magnalium centers under warranty at NO CHARGE.

 

Good for you, Bernard!! Ya gotta love a manufacturer going above and beyond !!

 

I handeled the situation of the broken center for Dymag.
The wheel was broken at a track event in Mexico the customer runs full slicks all the time at the track and  these wheels had about 60 full track days on them unfortunately they were not checked after each event and the spoke developed a hairline crack that started from the engraving on the back of the spoke.  They stamp the back of the spokes with the model number of the mold. The crack propagated causing the spoke to break in half and transfering the weight load the the remaining spoke as he continued to run the wheel then broke as he was in a straight line braking zone at the end of a staright away.
The damage to the car was minimal about $10k and Dymag paid for the damage and the full set of wheels the car was back at the track in 10 days time and the customer was fully reimbursed.
The magnesium center was sent to a testing lab here in the U.S. to make sure that it had all the properties it should have for cast magnesium the test results came back with passing results and upon inspection of the wheel it was determined that fatigue was what caused the failure.

 

 

Although Dymag had replaced them and paid for all the costs, I don't think they should be selling these for road use at all, luckily in this case, it happen at the track.

 

I was thinking of them at one point but got HRE monoblock instead as my mate told me that this might happen and the slight weight difference is not worth it.

 

Imagine the same guy was on a busy street instead of the track, there is no way he can control the car and innocent people might be seriously hurt.

 

 

Although Dymag had replaced them and paid for all the costs, I don't think they should be selling these for road use at all, luckily in this case, it happen at the track.

 

I was thinking of them at one point but got HRE monoblock instead as my mate told me that this might happen and the slight weight difference is not worth it.

 

Imagine the same guy was on a busy street instead of the track, there is no way he can control the car and innocent people might be seriously hurt.

 

That wheel had 60 track days on it, that's a lot of hard driving!! I doubt that you could break(via overstressing) a dymag on the street. This one hit a 10" high kerb at 40 mph. IMO, it held up as well/better than any alloy wheel under the same impact.

 

That wheel had 60 track days on it, that's a lot of hard driving!! I doubt that you could break(via overstressing) a dymag on the street. This one hit IMO, it held up as well/better than any alloy wheel under the same impact.

 

The biggest thing about these wheels, is that when they are strong they are strong, but even the most minor defect will end up becoming catastrophic. The problem lies in the fact that it is very difficult to point out any defects in the wheel with just your eyes.

Yes, in the aerospace industry they use ultrasound scanners or something similar, because it's impossible to see what's going on inside the wheel, not to mention tough to spot tiny cracks. Plus, it's not the carbon fiber or kevlar that's "breaking", per se, it's the surrounding epoxy resin that's stress fracturing in a way similar to plastic or glass.

Tezta, I'd like to hear your take on this please

Tezta, I'd like to hear your take on this please

 

 

As Mr. Vroom has pointed out there is more to the story than just the one photo. Bill Koenig who is the US importer for Dymags, pointed out that the wheel has been used for the track over 60 times without the properly checking or the wheel after each track day, we all know how much wear and tear we can put on our cars in a single track day and any wheel going through such conditions would have failed. Bill stated that the crack originated from an engraving on the back of the spoke, previous centers were made from cast magnesium and had a number of different engravings on the back of the wheel including a DYMAG logo, the size and offset of the wheel and its DOT and JWL approval stamps. Currently with the new magnalium centers there are no engravings on the back of the wheel, the centers have also been cut differently with a wider spoke where the center meets the barrel, this is to create a better footprint of the spoke on the barrel as they had found in the past that under very heavy braking the spokes maybe prone to twisting on the rim and could eventually lead to a breakdown of the spoke/rim seal.

 

These are a few measures have been taken to improve on their previous wheel, the photo of the destroyed dymag wheel is worse than it looks, this is the result of someone carelessly using their car on a track and not a result of a bad product. A similar situation happened to HRE a while back, someone posted a photo of a wheel that was missing a center and said this is an HRE wheel and this is the result of using it on the track, it created a lot of controversy and an apparent ban of HRE's at certain track days if i remember correctly. As usual the reports of breakages have been vastly exaggerated, to date dymag has seen three or four wheels out of sales of over 1,500 wheels and in each case, the car had been driven over curbs on track days and any wheel given such sustained abuse will eventually break. Dymag wheels are actually better than most at withstanding such abuse as testified by the GMG Porsche team in the USA. Having said all of that, Dymag wheels are targeted at high performance vehicles and they are continually improving them to make them as robust as possible, which is one reason that they have switched to the new forged Magnalium center, which is stronger than forged aluminium and does not suffer with corrosion issues.

 

 

As Mr. Vroom has pointed out there is more to the story than just the one photo. Bill Koenig who is the US importer for Dymags, pointed out that the wheel has been used for the track over 60 times without the properly checking or the wheel after each track day, we all know how much wear and tear we can put on our cars in a single track day and any wheel going through such conditions would have failed. Bill stated that the crack originated from an engraving on the back of the spoke, previous centers were made from cast magnesium and had a number of different engravings on the back of the wheel including a DYMAG logo, the size and offset of the wheel and its DOT and JWL approval stamps. Currently with the new magnalium centers there are no engravings on the back of the wheel, the centers have also been cut differently with a wider spoke where the center meets the barrel, this is to create a better footprint of the spoke on the barrel as they had found in the past that under very heavy braking the spokes maybe prone to twisting on the rim and could eventually lead to a breakdown of the spoke/rim seal.

 

These are a few measures have been taken to improve on their previous wheel, the photo of the destroyed dymag wheel is worse than it looks, this is the result of someone carelessly using their car on a track and not a result of a bad product. A similar situation happened to HRE a while back, someone posted a photo of a wheel that was missing a center and said this is an HRE wheel and this is the result of using it on the track, it created a lot of controversy and an apparent ban of HRE's at certain track days if i remember correctly. As usual the reports of breakages have been vastly exaggerated, to date dymag has seen three or four wheels out of sales of over 1,500 wheels and in each case, the car had been driven over curbs on track days and any wheel given such sustained abuse will eventually break. Dymag wheels are actually better than most at withstanding such abuse as testified by the GMG Porsche team in the USA. Having said all of that, Dymag wheels are targeted at high performance vehicles and they are continually improving them to make them as robust as possible, which is one reason that they have switched to the new forged Magnalium center, which is stronger than forged aluminium and does not suffer with corrosion issues.

 

Hi Tezta,

Very well put and you do have a very strong point. Your Magnalium center rims could be interesting. Dymags are OE equipment on the Koenigsegg, Mosler and Ascari super cars, thats good enough for me.

I had some issues(leaking) with my Dymags, and the company is replacing my set with the next generation Magnalium centers under warranty at NO CHARGE.

 

I just got my new Dymags installed today, initial impressions are very good. The carbon fiber weave is perfect and the wheels are beautifully balanced. I will update after I get a few hundred miles on them. Thanks to Jason Heffner for helping out with the warranty issues.

Way to go Bernard!!!

I just got my new Dymags installed today, initial impressions are very good. The carbon fiber weave is perfect and the wheels are beautifully balanced. I will update after I get a few hundred miles on them. Thanks to Jason Heffner for helping out with the warranty issues.

 

PICS!

 

Bernard, did you get a new design? If so, please post pics